Pupils: Absenteeism
(asked on 17th July 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many pupils were persistently absent from school in England for each academic year from 2018–19 to date.
The department publishes figures from the school census on pupil absence in England. The latest data covers the academic year 2024/25 and is available on GOV.UK.
Published data for the percentage of pupils classified as persistent absentees (defined as missing 10% or more of possible sessions) since the 2018/19 academic year is shown below.
| Persistent absence rate | Number of persistent absentees |
2018/19 | 10.86% | 771,863 |
2019/20 | - | - |
2020/21 | 12.08% | 872,438 |
2021/22 | 22.51% | 1,643,876 |
2022/23 | 21.22% | 1,569,303 |
2023/24 | 19.95% | 1,487,022 |
2024/25 | 18.14% | 1,340,437 |
Source: School Census
Full-year absence statistics for 2019/20 were not published due to the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.